If you love asparagus and want to grow some yourself, waste no time in getting an asparagus bed planted. Even with the best of care, an asparagus bed won’t hit its stride until several years after planting. Once it starts yielding a crop, the same bed will produce an abundant crop of spears spring after spring for at least the next 20 to 30 years.

In the old days, gardeners were told to prepare an asparagus bed by digging an 18″ deep trench and then backfilling it with a mix of compost and soil. Today we can grow improved varieties of asparagus that are less work to plant (6″ to 12″ deep is adequate) and that produce almost twice as many spears per plant. The production increases are due to the fact that these hybrids are all-male cultivars, so no energy is wasted producing seeds. They also don’t produce baby asparagus plants, which can compete for space and nutrients. So forget about Martha Washington and the old asparagus varieties. Most of the new varieties are also resistant to two common asparagus diseases: fusarium rot and asparagus rust.